Out of the circular crater of Copernicus, a fifty-mile plain surrounded by a ring of stupendous peaks, League cruisers were swarming up like startled hornets from their nest. But before they could gain altitude or fall into battle formation, the phalanx of pirate ships crashed down among them.
It was a whirling chaos of battle then for minutes, a raging dogfight of League and pirate ships low across the surface of the moon. Atom-shells clogged space with blinding flares, fatally hit ships went whirling down out of control to crash on the lunar desert, other ships collided in midspace and tumbled in a single twisted mass of wreckage.
But the Companions of Space maintained their formation. The pirates were fighting with traditional ferocity, pouring shells from every gun, increasing the disorganization of the League ships. Unable to form up, broken into scattered groups of ships that rapidly fell prey to the concentrated fire of the pirates, Trask's squadron was losing two ships to the pirates’ one.
When but a score of the League ships survived, those survivors turned and fled back toward Copernicus. At once, Thorn swung the Venture around in the same direction.
"After them!” he shouted. “Now's our chance!"
More than sixty pirate ships had survived that terrific battle above the moon. They raced after the Venture, toward Copernicus.
Thorn glimpsed the League cruisers landing in the great crater, their crews pouring forth in space-suits, retreating across the crater to where a great glassite window glistened in its floor.
Down into the crater swept the Companions’ ships, landing near the deserted League cruisers. The Planeteers and old Stilicho and Lana raced down to the door of their ship, the excited pirate crew gathering to follow them out. “Lana, you can't go with us!” Thorn cried.
The girl's eyes flashed inside her glassite helmet.
"I go!” she flared. “I've led the Companions to battle before, and I'm leading them now!"
The door opened, and they poured out onto the surface of the moon, onto the floor of the giant crater. Out of all the other ships, the space-suited pirates were pouring in hundreds.
"Follow, men!” Lana's voice rang from her suit-audio. “See, they run before us!"
The League sailors were retreating still toward that big glassite window set in the floor of the crater. They were firing back at the pirates with their atom-guns as they retreated.
The Planeteers and Lana and Stilicho led the pirate rush forward. And beside the girl bounded the blazing-eyed space dog. Ool was in his native element upon the airless surface of the moon!
Thorn saw that the League men were retreating into the entrance of a big airlock set in the crater floor beside the great window. An airlock that he knew must give entrance into the lunar cavern beneath that held Blaine's laboratory.
With a fierce rush, the pirates swept on. Men among them fell by dozens from the bursting shells of the enemy's guns. But they were firing back as they charged, using their atom-pistols with deadly effect as they ran. Old Stilicho was shooting with two weapons, his faded eyes burning inside his glassite helmet with fierce battle-light. “They've jammed the airlock!” Thorn yelled. “At them!"
The retreating League soldiers could not all pass through the airlock quickly enough. Down among those who were congested at its entrance swept Thorn and his wild followers.
The League men, hopelessly outnumbered, refused to surrender. Only when all lay dead could Thorn and his party advance through the door of the airlock, which led downward.
They poured into it, forcing open the inner door. Air whistled out past them, and from the blue-lit depths below atom-shells whizzed up at them. But they pressed savagely on, down the ramp below the airlock, down into the vast and gloomy lunar cavern.
CHAPTER XXII
Blaine's Weapon
The cavern into which the Planeteers and their companions had fought their way was of huge dimensions, a thousand feet across and two hundred in height. It was illuminated by krypton lamps and by the flood of brilliant sunlight that poured in through the big glassite window in the rocky ceiling.
At the center of the cavern, under that window, loomed a colossal and unfamiliar mechanism. It was a great, gleaming chromaloy sphere, supported by girders above a massed complexity of power-chambers and generators. Everything else in the cavern was dwarfed by that towering, gleaming globe.
The space-suited League soldiers, both those who had retreated from outside and those in the cavern who had hastily donned their suits, were firing savagely at their attackers.
Thorn tried to keep Lana behind him as he advanced with Gunner and Sual Av at the head of the pirates, his atom-pistol hot in his gloved hand from firing.
"Gun them all down!” old Stilicho's shrill voice was crying from his suit audio.
"John, look — they're destroying the machine, over there!” Sual Av yelled, wildly pointing.
Thorn glimpsed where the Venusian pointed, far on the other side of the colossal mechanism. A little group of space-suited men there were firing into Blaine's huge machine with their atom-pistols, endeavoring to destroy its generators.
"Forward!” Thorn shouted. “We've got to stop them."
They rushed forward. And ahead of them bounded the space dog, Ool, great-fanged jaws yawning wide!
Reckless of their own lives, maddened with apprehension, the Planeteers shot their way forward through the disorganized mob of League defenders.
With Lana Cain now close behind them, they forced through to the other side of the gigantic machine.
Thorn recognized the tall, spacesuited figure of the leader of the little group who were trying to destroy the mechanism. The face inside that glassite helmet was the bony green face and insanely raging eyes of Haskell Trask.
"Throw down those guns!” ‘Thorn yelled through his suit-audio. “Surrender!"
"I'll surrender this way!” Trask's crazed, harsh voice came back.
The dictator shot at Thorn in the same instant. The little shell flicked past Thorn and exploded behind him — and Lana Cain sank to the floor as the blinding flare touched her side.
Wild with rage, Thorn raised his gun to fire. But Ool was ahead of him. The big space dog, eyes terrible as it saw its mistress fall, arced through space in a leap straight at Trask.
The huge jaws closed upon the throat of the dictator's space-suit and tore. The other League men beside Trask shrunk back appalled, raising their hands in surrender.
The battle in the cavern behind the Planeteers was over. The remaining League defenders, seeing their Leader fall, raised their hands in surrender also, dropping their weapons.
Thorn was bending frantically over the fallen pirate girl.
"Lana!” he cried.
"I'm… not much hurt,” the girl stammered, stumbling up with his help. “The side of my suit is scorched. I threw myself aside to avoid the shell, and that's why I fell."
She sprang unsteadily forward, and gripped Ool's collar to pull him off the prostrate dictator. But it was too late. The space dog's great tusks had ripped through Haskell Trask's suit and torn his throat.
Trask looked up at them with pale eyes curiously drained of emotion.
"I… would have ruled the system for its own good,” he murmured. “I would have—” He sighed, and was still.
So a dictator died…
Thorn straightened, shaken. The airlock doors had been closed and oxy-generators were throbbing. And old Stilicho, his helmet off and face still flaming with battle-light, came forcing through the excited pirate throng with another man.
"Found this fellow prisoned in a separate chamber,” the old pirate shrilled. “He says he's—"
"Philip Blaine!” Sual Av shouted.